Navel-Gazing In The Fast Lane

So, I have this new book about emotional eating. 

It’s a funny label, because, if you’re like me, during the act of emotional eating the LAST thing you feel is emotions.  When I’m in that mindless stuffing phase of “emotional” eating, what I feel is, in fact, nothing.  Which, as I have recently been led to understand, is the purpose of the activity - if a mindless activity can be said to have a purpose…

The “nothingness” I feel  is a feeling of release - a void where before there was anxiety, or stress, or depression, or loneliness, or whatever drove me to the cupboard in the first place…  Not that I’d really noticed that before…

Speaking of things I never noticed before… I never even noticed that I was an emotional eater, because I’m not that girl I’ve read about who polishes off a gallon of ice cream and 2 large pizzas in one sitting.  “I’m SOOOooo glad I’m not her..” I’d think to myself as I polished off a pint of Haagen Daas and 1 small pizza in one sitting… “I mean, yeah, I’m eating THIS… but it’s not THAT much– not like HER, the poor thing….”

Yeahhhhh…  Somehow in there I’d always managed to overlook the obvious…

Just one pint of Hagen Daas is approximately 1300 calories.  
Just one 10-inch pizza - JUST cheese, no toppings (as if I EVER get just-cheese pizzas) - runs around 1500 calories. 
Add something “healthy” to wash it down like just one glass of juice or milk, and we slap on another 200-300 calories, easy.
In case, like me, you’re math-challenged - We’re now looking at “just” 3,000 calories, give or take, and even the most numerically phobic of us here probably already know that you must burn 3,500 calories to lose JUST  ONE POUND. 

You don’t have to be Stephen flipping Hawking to realize that, conversely, if I have eaten 3,000 calories in one sitting, I have effectively earned myself one pound of weight gain.   Right.  There. 

In the hour or so it would take me to eat my “just this once, I’ve been careful all week” pizza and ice cream idiocy I will have UNdone any work I might have achieved in seven days of concerted effort towards conscientous eating, and excercise.  Gone. Nullified. Erased.  Simple as that.

And with me, it’s rarely as obvious as a pizza and ice cream binge - for me it’s usually little things like grabbing “just a taste” of the side of butter potatoes I made “for my husband to eat” on Monday, having a couple glasses of wine with dinner on Tuesday, oily giardinera topping and melted cheese on my lunchtime sub sandwich on Wednesday… and so on, and so forth  — little “absentminded” sabotages that add up over the days and weeks and months…  Little choices that over time add up to one BIG ass.

People with weight issues like mine often say “I don’t know why I ate that cheese/those potatoes/that ice cream!  If only I knew what made me do it…”  As if THAT was the key. Or rather, as if that was any MYSTERY to us.

We all KNOW what “makes” us do it.  We have a sad place somewhere, from something - past or present - and we try to fix or fill it with food.  Even though we also know that not only doesn’t fix ANYthing, but usually just makes everything seem worse by adding weight issues to our already tough psychological situation.

And ALL the books (including my new one here), tell me that until I have a full grip on those emotions and heal them, I will “never succeed at overcoming the eating patterns.” “NEVER” !!!

Guess what I decided last night?

That. Is. Bull. Shit.

If we actually believe that hype - that until we’re emotionally healed we’re doomed to stay fat - we’re doomed to stay fat. 

I don’t know ANYone without emotional scars, without buttons that can be pressed, old hurts that can be triggered, self doubts and fears about certain things.   Not all of those people try to eat it away.  I do sometimes, maybe you do too.  But my point is, it’s NOT being in pain that “makes” us eat, it’s we who choose to try to ease the pain with food.  We, actually, REALLY, are still in control.  Nothing ”makes” us eat - we choose to.  Some choose drink, or drugs, or yoga, or Jesus, or long walks to get through it - I choose food.

My psychological wounds are pretty standard WE-Channel fare: a rough childhood marked by poverty, neglectful and emotionally abusive parents who didn’t like each other much either,  instability in the home/s, innapropriate advances from male adults when I was young, being put on diets from the age of 10, kicked out of school, on my own since age 19, etc., etc…  I have all the standard reasons to self-medicate, all the developmental patterns of someone with compensation issues, and guess what?  NO, repeat NO amount of journalling in my Dr. Phil notebook is EVER going to make it all better, and Donald Trump couldn’t afford the team of international specialists it would take to analyze me.  Does that make me doomed to be fat?   Of course not.  What nonsense.

And let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that I could wave a magic wand and disperse all the fallout from those old issues.  So what?  Life will bring me a shiny brand new issue in just my size to struggle with before the week is out - maybe it’ll be work related, maybe family related, maybe financial, or maybe a rhinocerous will surprisingly escape from the zoo, catch the Midtown bus, and come trample my house flat.  The world is a chaotic place and all things are possible and who knows what tomorrow brings?   So - in the case of emotional eating - what matters is NOT, I think, whether we have life’s issues identified and under control (as that’s an impossibility), but whether we have our coping mechanisms identified and under control.

I think it will be of great benefit to me to just accept the fact that, whether I like it or not, these factors are at work on me.  And when that false sense of hunger comes over me (emotional hunger) I can take the time to learn to recognize what’s up, and I can focus on the fact that I have a choice whether or not to go eat in response to it, or just say “Ah, there is that old hurt again. It is used to trying to fix itself with food - which has not worked in 30-something years, and isn’t going to work this time, either.”  Does that mean I may have to just sit there and feel the ugly feeling for a few minutes?  Probably.  But that will likely be easier on me in the long run than the ugly feeling I would have to just sit there and feel after having stuffed my face with something useless in response to an emotional yearning I refused to acknowledge. 

We all know THAT feeling — it usually manifests itself in an inner monologue that goes something like “Oh my GOD WHY did I just eat that, I can’t believe I just ATE that, what is WRONG with me I KNOW better, I am NEVER going to lose this weight WHY do I even TRY, oh god I HATE myself, I SUCK, I can’t DO this, WHY WHY WHY…”   

There is an awesome parable, accredited to the Native Americans -

 A father is talking to his son, and he tells the son, “I have two powerful wolves inside of me, fighting all the time.  One of them tells me to be courageous, wise, and respectful of myself and others.  The other instructs me to do dangerous, stupid, damaging and self-destructive things.”
The son is very worried and says, “But father, that’s terrible!  Which one will win?” 
His father replies, “Whichever one I feed.”

I don’t think I need to know, or rehabilitate, or “embrace” my destructive wolf.  I don’t need to journal about him, do twelve steps on him, reconcile with him, forgive him, disect him, “own” him, or take time to do his little family tree to find out exactly where he came from and why, why, why…

All I have to do is learn to recognize his ugly ass when I see it, and just

Not. Feed. Him.